For me it's reading and actual experience from other people. Realize that some of us have been doing this for years. I started getting interested in cars about 9-10 years ago (I was 23-24 years old). Before that I didn't even know how to change my oil!

Some of my experience has come from watching techs work on my car, or just trying to do it myself. I was 1st into the car show scene and learned alot about parts and what is needed to actually compete and win at car shows. That got boring after about 2 years.

My racing (autocrossing and a little road racing) experience comes from hanging around people who know their stuff. When I first started I wanted to learn from the best so I tried to watch people who ran at Nationals and were really die-hard autocross racers.